BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland (12 page)

Before the testy Lein picked a fight, Lir told Cian in a quiet aside, “You should spend less time at these pits. We’ll row out on the lake and you can ask me your questions.”

Cian replied without turning his head, “Yes. I’d like to learn rowing.”

Their friendship began. Lir’s word was sound. Over the following lunate, Lir managed to show him basics of the smelting process. They strolled past the pits after dark without lingering or attracting attention. On the lake and out of others’ hearing, Lir told him the smiths did more reliable smelting at night when it was easier to see the color of the flame and monitor the pit’s heat to obtain a smooth, uniform copper.

“It takes an artisan to finish metal: knowing how many tempering blows until a tool is ready and one more blow would only serve to smash it. Knowing when the copper will take more heat or when it would split with more heat.”

A smelter had only one blink of time to move the glowing-hot stone crucible off the charcoal and pour out the molten copper. The worker handled the smoking crucible with tongs made of green wood. Another man stood ready with the stone mold. Very swift movements were required whether pouring an irregular flat ingot cake, or pouring into the stone mold for an axe. When the copper was ready to pour, the smelting workers seemingly danced in the darkness as rainbows of molten fire issued from their hands, a smith close by.

The smelters’ use of wood tongs and their dance with fire resulted in mishaps so that a number of pit workers had disfiguring burns on face or chest or arms; some had lost fingers.

Cian confided his horror at these burned workers, during one of his jaunts with Lir over the lake. “Why must those injured ones continue to labor at the mines?” He used Lir’s Seafarer dialect that resembled his own language. “I first saw persons treated as slaves by Invaders at their Boyne camp. Again, here at the Lake of Many Hammers, the numbers who struggle and toil for these few Invaders. How can this be?” He tried to express himself, aware of his own tenuous position under Elcmar’s thumb.

Sunlight reflected dappling waves onto Lir’s somber face. “It looks like an endless task, Cian. Many tribes have been foolish in this regard, to be ensnared by the traders. These Invaders decreed mining as a way for certain tribes to pay off debt. At least during the winter, the work slows here at the mines and many workers are allowed to return to the Seafarer peninsula. That is, if seagoing boats can be had to take them back. My own ship, the Sweeper of the Waves, broke up as I landed at this coast or I wouldn’t be stuck waiting here for another! But I agree with you, this mining is like living at the entrance to the Otherworld. Perhaps this is the entrance to their Otherworld, one of darkness and fire.” Lir gazed at the rippling lake, his long arms dipping the paddle. “I know firsthand the dangers of traveling the great waters when the autumn stars portend storms. The rumor persists that Elcmar will travel on to the Continent, after it is deemed wise. To risk a long voyage after equinox is inconceivable. Yet I would myself risk it to leave here and return to my Seafarer coasts.”

“Is there no way to be free of these Invaders?”

“Ach, sure. We’ll see. There, did you ever see such a fine great fish as that!” Lir skillfully turned the hide coracle toward widening rings on the lake after a resounding splash. They sped over the lake’s pristine blue under a clear sky.

Cian let matters rest for the time being. He did not understand “debt” and tucked away that word to ask about it later. He had seen the blazing hot pits and the brutal pressures of pouring without accident, that even a drop of copper wasted on the ground would result in punishment for the whole crew at a pit. He was glad that his friend Lir could enjoy being on the water on this sparkling day, even as he vowed to find out what Lir meant about the Invaders’ snare.

Cian remembered the messages he brought from the Boyne. To deliver Cliodhna’s message, he must approach the mining supervisor, Gebann, her father. Gebann was a solid block of a man and sure of himself. The older man’s proud profile, a high forehead and straight prominent nose above a firm jawline, resembled the strong features of Tethra and more than a few of his own elders at the Boyne. Gebann’s demeanor reminded Cian a great deal of Oghma. He took his time delivering her message to her father, waiting for the best moment.

The smith looked piercingly at Cian with deepset brown eyes as the young Starwatcher first approached him, Gebann returning from the mine along the pleasant but smoky lakeshore. He saluted Gebann in dialect. They stopped. Cian nodded at an isolated rowan tree where the late sunlight shone on bright berries remaining on its branches, and he told Gebann an old tale of the Starwatchers to see how this Seafarer would respond.

Gebann answered with his own ending, an ending similar in form and meaning to Cian’s.

“We share this tale of the rowan, and long tradition between Starwatcher and Seafarer,” Cian said. Gebann grunted in assent. He voiced Cliodhna’s message to her father. “Cliodhna sends you her love, and that she is keeping well among those women living at the Boyne. She hopes to rejoin you soon.”

“Among those women living, she says? What does she mean?”

Cian hesitated. “There was a woman murdered, a Starwatcher. We Starwatchers shall miss her.” He added tersely, “A sharp knife killed the woman Sheela.”

The two strolled toward the smoking pits and workers’ huts.

Gebann had been impressed with what he had seen of Cian since the lad’s arrival at the lake. Elcmar took him aside and implicated this Starwatcher in a slaying at the Boyne. But Gebann saw for himself that Cian kept apart, worked as he was told, and observed quiet ways.
What threat does young Cian pose to Elcmar?

Then he wondered if this young man were too clever by half again, positioning himself to ask for marriage with Cliodhna, who had come of age and no man failed to notice. Gebann wanted only to have his daughter return safely to their homeland. He saw no future for her on this island. Since she had been taken to the Boyne camp, her personal safety among those reckless warriors kept him awake nights. That Invaders looked upon Seafarers—and her—as expendable, despite his own importance to mining copper here, he knew from bitter experience. Cian’s remarks heightened his concern. So it was true, a young Starwatcher woman had been senselessly murdered at the Boyne on the sacred spring equinox. Cliodhna’s message reassured him for now, but among Invaders she could never be truly safe.

The young Starwatcher maintained a respectful silence, waiting for the elder smith to speak again after hearing Cliodhna’s words.

Gebann considered what he could use as leverage with Elcmar. He thought again with satisfaction: I am the only person on this island who knows where lies what Invaders want very much: tin to mix with copper for bronze. And, gold.

The ore of this Lake mine made a good slick copper that poured well, but he knew how much more valuable it would be given a local source of tin. The Invaders could then opt either to smelt the two metals together for export as bronze, or to export tin and copper in separate ingots. Booming trade could be made in the new metal, bronze, along northern coasts. Many communities had never seen this stronger alloy, bronze, but they had heard of it. Sources of tin to make bronze were very rare on the Continent. Tin had yet to be found in quantity over on the big eastern island, or anywhere along the channel and northwest corner of the Continent. Traders craved tin. The powerful trader Taranis craved tin.

Here on Eire, the Invaders had copper in good supply at this Lake mine but they had not found tin. Only a small amount of tin, one part tin to ten parts copper, was needed to produce bronze, with its superior qualities. If Elcmar wanted to make bronze here, his smiths had to re-smelt it from bronze scrap, costly and imported.
Elcmar searches Eire for gold when he should also be looking for tin. And he fancies himself a trader! Mighty Taranis will have his head…

Gebann retraced his negotiations since Elcmar returned, newly made
ard ri
, to the Lake Of Many Hammers. That Elcmar insinuated himself into the penultimate position as chief warrior did not surprise Gebann, who had known the tall Elcmar since he scrounged and fought his way as an orphaned boy. Even then, the young Elcmar boldly hitched passages along the coasts with Seafarers while he assessed trading and trade routes with a fierce intelligence. Elcmar was aloof but disciplined, Gebann gave him that much; but the man operated according to only his own scruples and for his own ends.

The smith, feeling his age, wanted a definite end to his supervision of the mining here, when he would return to the sunkissed shores of his home to the south. He could almost smell and taste its luxuriance. He missed his wife, his second wife who raised Cliodhna after her mother died giving birth to her. That woman would by now be frantic that they had not returned, or worse: she might give up and throw herself from the cliffs thinking they had been lost at sea, as some women did.

It was probably better to be pressuring Elcmar than Connor, for the latter’s attention span was short and that man showed a base and depraved nature. Gebann had guessed who in fact murdered the Starwatcher Sheela.

Disappointment stung him when the tattered currach arrived from the Boyne without his daughter. Elcmar blamed Connor for taking their seagoing boats north, stranding Cliodhna.
It may have been for want of a good boat. Oceangoing boats are not to be had here. Not unless another trader soon happens to put in at the coast below. Could I count on anyone here to assure Cliodhna’s safe journey to me?
Gebann’s steps dragged.

A heavy feeling slowed his legs and arms. He dreaded spending a winter in this colder, damper climate than on his own coast far to the south. He reflected on what might happen if he departed Eire, bolted for good. His people at the Lake mine would miss him sorely, for he led them in the ore extraction and ensured their spiritual well being on this island far from their home.

Their common beliefs made it easier for Starwatchers around the mining area to accept these Seafarers who came onto their island to dig ore. There had been no violence over the many seasons of miners coming and going from the Continent, and the Invaders did not fortify this mining camp against the natives. Over time, the local Starwatchers traded fish and beef to the miners; some even worked at felling trees for the smelting pits. We grow careless about our secrets here, Gebann thought, and he glanced at Cian.

“Is it curious about the metal making that you are?” he asked in the Invader tongue.

“You could say that,” Cian said. “Curious about many things. Your land, that of the Seafarers. Your customs.” He again replied using their old shared dialect.

Gebann told him, “My people have long marked the sun’s seasons and the constellations, like Starwatchers. In fact, it would be hard to say which people influenced the other more. My own ancestors navigated all the way to this island. We tell the story and we still have the axes,” he said with pride. “Seafarers exchanged starwatching knowledge for many generations, north along the great bay of the Continent and south along our Seafarer peninsula. In those times, the building of mounds and other ideas traveled slowly over the great water. Not like these boats full of Invaders with strange ideas.” He checked the lad’s expression.

Cian asked, “How did your people come to know Invaders?”

“Same as here. They arrived searching for the stones to make metal.”

At the clipped answer, Cian wisely resumed his silence.

Gebann thought, these traders set up camps and they do not leave. Not if these marauding sons of dogs find out where ores lie waiting. Rather, where experienced men like me find metal ores for them. We Seafarers rue the day that Invaders counted us in their debt from trading and brought our miners—using our own mariners—here to Eire to toil for them. It is I, Gebann, who can see where solid earth has boiled up or been thrust and folded, and locate metal ores. It is I who select a deposit, then supervise pulling it from the earth. It is I who roast and smelt. I turn formless rock into shining metal.

He’d been stuck here more seasons than he bargained for. When he first arrived on the Starwatchers’ island, he chuckled. The sun and stars told these people of Eire where to find anything. They used natural boundaries, the mountains and rivers within the four corners of its lush wilderness, to delimit one tribe’s area from another. It would confound the Invaders no end trying to locate anything on this island.

He went prospecting when he could, periods when the Invaders left the mining camp and he had the run of things. He ventured all the way to Eire’s east coast with a Starwatcher named Sreng guiding him there and back. He noted but a few stone carvings marking a valley’s entrance or a high place but for those Gebann memorized the landmarks and place names.

He wanted to explore more in those eastern mountains, but he had Cliodhna to consider. When Cliodhna begged to come here with him from their peninsula, he should not have agreed to it. They’d made it here despite the mariners saying a female brought bad luck on water. A girl then, she matured rapidly, and now only his power as the master smith prevented any of the men taking her to husband.

A fine new boat arrived from the Continent carrying Connor’s party including the jumped-up Elcmar. Gebann asked to leave Eire with his daughter but Connor ignored his request and made sure Gebann had no boat to take them. Connor made him search the rugged southwest mountains with them for gold, without success. That at least kept those two away from Cliodhna.